Things You Need to Know About Social Media

When it comes to promoting your small to medium-sized business on social media, there are most definitely right and wrong ways to go about it. Here is an overview of things to do (and not do)

1. There is no magic formula for clicks/engagement
Contrary to what you’ve read, posting x amount of times a day at x times and using x number of hashtags and posting in specific groups will not help your posts get engagement and clicks. The formula is made up of a vast amount of factors that consider many things on each individual post.

What can you do?
Look at the stats on your social media accounts; the analytics are there for you and for free. See when people are engaging the most and what types of content they enjoyed – you just identified your audience.

2. Social Media is free advertising
This one trips up a lot of business owners. Yes, you can post about your business on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but that takes significant time to create posts, get the image sizes right, research hashtags, and come up with ideas to post. That takes time directly away from running your business. Outsourcing your social media is an excellent strategy to have the best of both worlds.

3. Your brand must be present on all social platforms
If you attempt to manage and grow your brand on every social media platform you run across, you’ll find it is not only exhausting but a real exercise in futility. It is challenging to set goals and achieve results when your focus gets diluted.

Determine where your customers are most likely to hang out. If you know who your ideal customer is from creating buyer personas, you know which social media platforms they are most likely to hang out on, and you can focus your marketing efforts there to obtain results.

4. Don’t annoy your followers
This is a colossal mistake that gets made daily by brands on social media. Every single post they make is about buying their product or service. It’s literally like someone popping up every few minutes saying, “Hey, buy my product.” or “Psst, give me money.”

Want to find out how fast people can put your brand on mute? Do that and see.

If you want to engage and interest your followers: be social. Share content that gives value to your audience. Ask questions, share things they might find interesting or shareable. Keep the marketing to a minimum.

5. New customers generally don’t happen, but both referrals and brand recognition does
Social media is fast-moving, and the current lifespan of a post on Twitter is about 18 minutes; Facebook posts last for about 30 minutes, and Instagram currently just over 15 hours. Combined with user attention spans shrinking, you have limited time to get your posts out there and seen (hopefully shared, liked, and engaged with).
(source: https://epipheo.com/learn/what-is-the-lifespan-of-social-media-posts/)

What social media is: a fantastic platform for connecting with existing customers and deepening relationships. This turns into referrals, and anyone looking for the product or service you offer may make a purchase decision faster based on your social media presence.

Your goal on social media should always be a longterm strategy. Create valuable content for your follows and target your ideal customers. Do this around a posting schedule that you can realistically keep up with or outsource it to a management agency.